Cooperation in the development team in practice

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Before I try to answer I would like to share my opinion about a fashion to working smart. Nowadays many companies encourage their employees to work efficiently. It is said that smart work is our individual choice and … that’s all. So, how to work smart? Let’s talk about example.

Imagine the trading and forwarding company that sells and transports bricks. Naturally the goal is to satisfy customers and make a money. Each individual employee of a logistic department knows how to transport bricks as soon as possible from one customer to another. Furthermore, company hires the most experienced truck drivers from the area. Unfortunately the customers are dissatisfied, because of the delays. They blame truck drivers for laziness. Truck drivers blame logistic department for stupidity. Logistic department blame the management for a financial crisis. Management decided to give up truck inspections several months ago because of the savings…

How to work smart in such environment? What’s the problem? In my opinion smart work isn’t our individual choice. To work efficiently we need well organized company and team. Of course, we have to be honest and work as good as we can. Otherwise our work will be very hard.

Finally, difficult work means challenge for our brain. This is the difference!

To understand others we need to understand ourselves first. Our behaviour is connected with our personality. We can choose our friends, but it is almost impossible to choose people we have to work with. Unfortunately, any job-interview doesn’t guarantee that we will fit in well with the team. In this case it is very important to know, what is our behaviour in response to different situations. Let’s take a look at some example.

X: Hi. I hear, you are going to Florida. Is it true?Y: How do you know that?
X: Whole company know that. You are very lucky! Y: Let’s go to the point. Do you finish a report?
X: I forget about that. ……………………………………….
Y: …………………………………………………………………….

What will be your answer in this case? There are a lot of possibilities. Answers may be totally different depending on temperament. Continue reading →

Employees choose their goals from the lists provided by their managers.

Working on everyday tasks and measuring the work progress and performance.

Performance evaluation, providing feedback and rewards or punishments

It seems simple but what about if management by objectives inspire employees to win in the lottery with the one rule: “there are no rules”? There are no rules to make goals from the lists and the only reason to achieve the good result during the evaluation are rewards or fear of punishment?

Total Quality Management is a specific approach to assure quality. It is assumed that a company exists for customers and the whole organization have to take care about the quality of the products and services all the time. Neither strict rules, nor special salary encourage people to look after their workplace. It is believed that people are working to earn more and more money but it isn’t the only reason. People are working to feel proud.

Total Quality Management doesn’t forget about the psychology. In most cases we don’t want to make a bullshit. Often we haven’t got a chance to report about problems and almost never to fix them. For that reason we usually warn our friends against the products we made. Does it seems strange?

Without crazy people our world will be so very different. Every discovery starts from something strange. It is impossible, it will not work… these two sentences are surely the most common among engineers, but unknown for inventors.

To change our neighborhood we need to listen inventors. Their opinions may be totally different than ours, but so what? We aren’t able to learn everything. Something may be difficult, strange for us, but this doesn’t mean that it is difficult and strange for our teammates.

Courage to fund a company. Courage to be an employee. Courage to stand out from the crowd.

We should be very brave to sell our products to the customers, to design and develop them. Only brave people create totally new designs. It is obvious, that without courage we will never get further than we are now.

However, the most important is to have enough courage to talk with other people e.g our team members or our leaders.